Piers Anthony - Rings of Ice

“Now I want off this bus!” she gasped.

Thatch was adamant “No.”

“I can break your finger.”

Still the fool would not give way. “You don’t understand.”

She put pressure on his hand and saw him whiten behind the tenuously hanging glasses. “Yes. Off!”

He shook his head, and finally the glasses fell. “No!”

She realized suddenly, and by no obscure intuition, that she could break his finger—and still it would not change his mind. He was impervious to compulsion. Yet obviously it was not sex that drove him; even in confused combat she could tell the difference between self defense and lascivious attack. He would have been more effective had he been less scrupulous about where he touched her. But he was one of those odd types who would not submit to pain. A masochist, possibly. He would keep coming after her, coming after her, as long as he was able.

“Gus only meant to help,” Thatch gasped. “We can’t let you go until you know the story—for your own good.”

She was twisting his finger off, yet instead of screaming the agony she knew he felt he was trying to reason with her! “I know enough of the story,” she said. “Two men pick up one girl—”

“To save you from the flood!” Gus cried, sitting up. She couldn’t hold them both off much longer, if Gus became active. In a moment she would have to make another break for it. First, the gun—

Her actions under stress often preceded her thoughts. She let go of Thatch and snatched up the weapon. Both men regained their feet and stood looking at her. They were disheveled and wet in patches from the struggle, but seemed more concerned than afraid.

“Maybe we’d better let her off,” Thatch said. He had recovered his glasses, the lenses miraculously unbroken.

“No ‘let’ about it!” Zena snapped. “When you try to gang up on a girl, and use a gun—”

“Look at the gun,” Thatch said with a wry expression.

She looked, alert for a trick. She was no expert in handguns, though she was sure she could shoot straight if she had to. Most women were womanishly foolish about such things; not her. But this, she saw now, was not actually a pistol. It was an imitation, a mockup for a child. A realistic toy.

“I just wanted to keep you quiet long enough to talk to you,” Thatch said.

Her glance flicked to the side. She could open the door and leap out before they could stop her, though she might have to clip someone again in the process. But what would she do out there in the pelting rain? Few cars were moving now, and fewer would be inclined to stop; and in just a few hours it would be too late anyway. Was escape really her best choice?

Obviously she had misjudged these men, to a degree. A toy gun! “I’m listening.”

“It’s going to rain a long time, Gus says. Maybe flooding, bad flooding. We have to stick to the highlands, the ridge, until we can get north out of the state and into the mountains. We’re picking up people along the way.”

“So I noticed.” She set down the mock gun. “Why haven’t you picked up men?”

Gus and Thatch exchanged glances. “It gets complicated,” Thatch said. “Anyway, we meant you no harm, and if you really don’t want to stay here, you can get off now. Gus just thought naturally you’d stay, and want to get dry.”

She glanced across the dinette cubicle and out of the window. The rain was still coming down heavily, at the rate of about an inch an hour. She knew it would continue, and that there would indeed be severe flooding. The men, whatever their motive, had stumbled on the right idea—and their vehicle was ideal for it. If she had misjudged them—and it seemed increasingly likely that she had, at least to some extent—she could do worse than travel with them. Much worse. For now.

“I do want to get dry,” she said. “But I don’t want to be pawed.”

Gus started to protest, but Thatch cut him off. “There’s clothing and a bath in back. You can find them yourself. We’ll be up front, driving.”

Was she making a mistake? This seemed to represent her best present hope for survival, even if it remained a minority chance. She nodded.

They squeezed aside, and Zena went back. She was still on guard against a fast move, but it didn’t come. And why should it? If they wanted something special from her, they could always try for it later. So long as she stayed aboard.

She wasn’t sure, now, that they did want anything special. They were a cozy twosome, with odd interdependencies.

The men took their seats in the driving section, and in a moment the vehicle started moving.

Zena found the clothing. The entire rear of the motor home was made into a beautiful couch that could convert into a full-size double bed large enough for three. Fair-sized windows were discreetly curtained for privacy. She wished she could lie down right then and sleep, forgetting all cares! Closets were on either side of the hall adjacent to this sitting-room/bedroom. One contained male attire, the other female.

Yet there was no other female aboard.

There were dresses, designed for a woman several inches taller and about forty pounds heavier than her. And they were a few decades out of style.

On the other hand, the male closet contained jeans and shirts to fit a high school boy. Obviously this motor home did not belong to the present occupants. Had they stolen it?

Zena closed the folding door across the hall and wedged into the boy’s apparel. Tight, very tight across the hips, but it did feel better to be dry.

She moved up to the tiny bathroom cubicle next to the male closet, carrying her wadded clothing. There was a sink, toilet and shower economically fitted in. She wrung her clothing out in the first, used the second, and passed up the last: she had no need of another drenching.

She found a towel and worked her hair over quickly. It converted magically from a dark brown straggle to a light brown dust mop. “Just call me Afro,” she murmured, smiling into the little mirror. Not an attractive arrangement, for her; her features were too sharp, so that she fancied she looked like a witch. Her green eyes contributed to the effect. But it would do just fine until she learned more about her hosts.

She emerged, but stepped back to pause before the rear side window. The water beat against it stridently, blurring everything beyond. There was only a vague sense of motion, aside from the swaying of the vehicle itself. She might as well be looking into a murky aquarium, seeing the slow turbulence of some great fish. Was it safe to be driving now? Of course not—but it would be disaster not to drive!

She would have to watch it, with the men, whatever their motive. Twenty-five and single—she would not stay young forever. Of course, men were not all alike; they only seemed that way. Maybe she had overreacted to Gus’s helping hand. Some people liked casual physical contact. But at least they knew, now, that she was not that type. She felt a twinge of guilt. She could have been married three times over by now, had she been that type. She could not point to any traumatic betrayals to explain her attitude. She could not claim that it was merely a matter of failing to meet the right man; by any rational definition the men she had known had been right. Perhaps she merely preferred her independence, needing no one. But that answer didn’t satisfy her any more than the other answers.

Life, in certain respects, was doubtless easier for women who could give and receive freely, however unwisely.

She took a short breath and blew it out. Threatening her with a toy pistol! Worse, she had fallen for it.

Still, it inevitably came back to this: who else was going her way? She couldn’t tell anyone the significance of the rain, and she didn’t have a car of her own. She was out of money; strangers wouldn’t cash checks, and she had exhausted her small change on coffee that morning. Hitchhiking had been bad enough before the rain started—but she had feared the government would be watching the mass-transportation facilities. In a few days the government’s attitude would be irrelevant, but if she were caught and detained today or tomorrow, it would be the end.